Grief
by WhoKnowsWhy
Summary: A missing scene from Episode 2.12; Reckoning.  Helen deserves to be mourned.


Grief

She half-wakes and rolls over, throwing one arm out to touch him, but her hand falls on cool empty sheet instead. Raising her head, she glances toward the bathroom, but there's only darkness. Her eye catches a sliver of light from the outside doorway and she slips out of bed, tugging the t-shirt down. She pads to the door and opens it further.

Raylan's sprawled in the porch chair, long legs stretched out in front of him. There's a glass in his hand and a half-empty bottle of JB beside him.

She leans in the doorway. "Can't sleep?"

"Nope."

She isn't surprised. The news about Jed's recant combined with the already emotional day had pushed him even deeper inside himself than usual. He'd hardly said two words on the drive back to Lexington. It made the decision not to tell him her secret yet an easy one. Back at the motel, they'd undressed and fallen into bed exhausted. She'd gone right to sleep. He obviously hadn't.

Stepping all the way outside, she reaches a hand out and strokes his hair.

He stares out into the night. "I can't believe she's gone."

"I know."

He picks up the bottle and pours another inch into the glass. He takes a drink. "Aunt Helen's the one taught me to drive. I ever tell you 'bout that?"

"No." She says. She could add that he's never really told her much of anything of his life before he left Harlan, but she just eases down onto the arm of the chair, leaning against him, and keeps running her fingers through his hair.

"I was about twelve, I think. Maybe thirteen. I hadn't had my growth spurt yet and I could barely reach the pedals on that big old truck." He chuckles. "It was a stick, of course. We went up and down the drive at her place near a hundred times before she took me out on the creek road." He takes a sip of the whiskey and motions with his hands. "It slopes downhill and goes into this wicked curve right before the creek. Creek's real sandy and shallow there, luckily, since that's where we ended up."

"You drove Helen's truck into the creek?" Winona laughs, picturing this Boy-Raylan shocked into a stupor as the truck goes barreling down the bank.

"Yep. With me screaming bloody murder all the way down. Went in up to the middle of the front tires. Once we recovered from the shock, she helped me shift it into reverse and got out to push….all it did was spray up mud and water everywhere. She got soaked and muddy, but she just swore and laughed."

"How'd you get the truck out?"

"Eventually one of the neighbors; Mac somethin' or other, I think, heard the commotion and came to help."

"She kept up the lessons though." He says, swallowing down the last of the amber liquid from the glass. "And then she 'borrowed' Arlo's truck keys and had a copy made for me so if I needed to get out of that house fast, I could, and in his truck, so he couldn't follow me."

She always knew Raylan was marked by violence, but now Winona thinks about what would make a child run in terror from their own home and the kind of woman who would help a boy prepare for just that. She says a silent prayer of thanks that Raylan had Helen in his life. "She looked out for you."

"Always. Even…" His voice breaks.

She wraps her arms around him and pulls him close. He buries his face in her shoulder and holds on tight. He doesn't move, or make a sound, but she feels dampness seep through the thin cotton of her shirt. "It's okay, Baby. I've got you." She murmurs. She rests her cheek against his hair and rubs his back in slow circles until he pulls away.

He doesn't look at her. He wipes at his face with one hand and then pulls her down onto his lap. She curls her legs in and lays her head on his chest. "You know, as long as Aunt Helen was alive I knew there was at least _one _woman in the world that loved me." Raylan says.

There's a hint of teasing in his voice and she picks up on his need to lighten the moment. "Oh, now see, I thought you'd left a trail of women across the south who loved you, Raylan. _Four that wanna own you, two that wanna stone you…."_

"Mmm hmmm _And one says she's a friend of mine."_ Raylan smirks and completes the old Eagles' lyric in unison with Winona. "Which one are you?"

She laughs. "I think I've been all three. But now, I'm another woman in this world who loves you." She breaks her spellbound gaze into Raylan's eyes and looks down at her body, curled in his lap. She'll tell him about the baby tomorrow.


End file.
